“I shouldn’t like to be reduced to eating insects,” said I; “fancy eating a stag-beetle fried in oil.”
“And yet I doubt,” replied the Captain, “if it is a bit worse than eating shrimps or swallowing living oysters. You’ve seen monkeys eating cockroaches?”
“Yes, swallowing them down as fast as they possibly could, and when they couldn’t eat any more, stuffing their cheeks for a future feast.”
“On the old Sans Pareil we had fifteen apes and monkeys, besides the old cat and a pet bear. Ah! Nie, what fun we did use to have, to be sure!”
“Didn’t they fight?”
“No, they all knew their places, and settled down amiably enough. The very large ones were not so nimble, and some of them were very solemn fellows indeed; the smaller gentry used to gather round these for advice, we used to think, and apparently listened with great attention to everything told them, but in the end they always finished up by pulling their professors by their tails. If at any time they did happen to find that old cat’s tail sticking out of the cage, oh! woe betide it! they bent on to it half a dozen or more, and it was for all the world like a caricature of our sailors paying in the end of a rope. Meanwhile the howls of the cat would be audible in the moon, I should think. Then up would rush our old cook with the broom, and there would be a sudden dispersal. But they were never long out of mischief. The little bear came in for a fair share of attention. You see, he wasn’t so nimble as the monkeys; they would gather round him, roll him on deck, and scratch him all over. The little Bruin rather liked this, but when three or four of the biggest held his head and three or four others began to stuff cockroaches down his throat, he thought it was taking advantage of good nature; he clawed them then and sometimes squeezed them till they squeaked with pain or fright. They used to bathe Bruin, though. The men brought the bath up, then the monkeys teased the bear until he got on his hind-legs and began clawing the air; this was their chance. They would make a sudden rush on the poor little fellow, he would step back, trip, and go souse into the bath. Then the chattering and jumping and grinning of the monkeys, and the laughing and cheering of the men, made a fine row, I can tell you. We had two monkeys that didn’t brook much nonsense from the others—an orang, and a long-nosed monkey—we got her in Sumatra—who looked a very curious old customer. The best of it was that the sailors taught the long-nosed one to snuff, and the orang to drink a glass of rum.
“As soon as the old orang heard the hammering on the rum-cask to knock out the bung, he began to laugh, and he beamed all over when his basin of grog was brought. The other old monkey taking a pinch was a sight to see. She stack to the box at last, and when any of her friends came to see her would present it to them with a ‘hae! hae! hae!’ that spoke volumes.”
